


remember me love when i transform

by captainangua



Category: Black Sails, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Basically, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Gen, Growing Old Together, Hurt John Silver, John Silver's Tragic Past, Minor Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver, Post Treasure Island, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 04, alluded to some more, i love the open questions of the ending so i don't wanna delve too deep into what's going on, just the feelings, like i haven't read ti in years but i feel like nothing categorically told us where madi was, madi deserves the world, silverflint implied but like show level so idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:55:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25699159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: “You think I still wish to fight wars?”He looked dumbfounded, and his quick eyes glanced furiously up and down her body, as though to make certain he was addressing the woman he believed he was.*Long John Silver escapes the events of Treasure Island and goes to find his wife.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw & John Silver, Captain Flint | James McGraw & Madi, Jim Hawkins & John Silver, Madi & John Silver, Madi/John Silver
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	remember me love when i transform

**Author's Note:**

> look i finally finished watching black sails for real/again and i am predictably going through several things.

They told her about the drunken one-legged man on her beach with the loud bird and Madi knew her husband had come home. Home to her, back on the island they’d first met, the island she’d told him she’d be when or if he ever returned from his insane quest.

She had been many things to many people in her life, but here she would always be important, she would always matter which would always be both comfort and burden. Cold England held none of its ability to embrace her.

So she slipped away from those who would accompany her, down steps that speak of a prosperity Flint might have sneered at, and carried a lantern down to where her husband sat, staring at the stars, massaging his leg. Beside him, his parrot perched on an oar, and seemed to be sleeping. Appearances suggested he might have sailed a rowboat alone all the way from Nassau, but she’d learned not to trust appearances, especially when it came to John Silver. He might hate to be vulnerable, but appearing so for a purpose was not beyond him.

He’d told her once he’d wait forever. The dim light of the lantern illuminating the lines around his smile told her that much about him was still real.

“You don’t drink.”

“Are you so sure you still know me?”

I would know you anywhere, she wanted to say. Every day since you’ve been out there again I hear metal hit wood and every time I still dare to hope it’s a peg-leg belonging to you, walking through my door. I know how desperate you are to be loved now that you’ve learned that’s something you’re capable of giving, of receiving, because that never ceases to surprise you. You don’t think much of stories, because you know how easily they’ve always been yours to control. You’re a no-good pirate who’s never stopped hating the sea.

And I know you don’t drink. So you’re either setting the scene to tell me something you’re frightened to tell me sober, or something really did change you out there again.

But Madi said nothing. If there was another thing she knew, it was that John Silver would always rush to fill any silence. Silence, unlike sound, cannot be shaped.

“I found it.”

“Found what?” She had wanted to stay quiet, but practiced as she might be at navigating leadership and their sometimes marriage, she could never help but be drawn in. It was why she always pushed him away again. She would always want to hear his voice but could never trust herself to listen to it.

“The treasure.”

She blinked, and settled herself down on a rock. Closer to the ground now, she noticed that the rum bottle beside him did look as empty as it should be for this level of inebriation. She didn’t trust that either, but it counted towards something.

“You didn’t used to call it that.”

“I -”

“How? Billy’s map really was something?”

“He never was much of a liar.”

Which is why the myth of Long John Silver always had more truth behind it than she’d wanted to believe.

“And Billy?”

“Dead.” He looked at her, and for a moment she was almost certain enough to call his bluff about the drinking again. “Would it be better or worse to know I did it?”

She still remembered Billy’s knife at her throat, his certainty that whether she lived or died was important only because of how much either might drive a wedge between Silver and Flint. She remembered her rage at being reduced continually to her part in someone else’s story.

“You’re still trying to protect me,” she said, shaking her head.

“Always,” he grinned, teeth glinting in the light. Behind his eyes, she imagined he was folding that particular story away for later perusal and adaptation for her benefit. “I found it,” he continued, “but I couldn’t keep it. Not enough of it. Enough to get me from the edge of the noose back to here and offer you the jewels to make the crown you deserve. But not enough to fight wars. Not enough to help. But we _can_ go back and get it.”

She wanted to remind him of what she’d told him before, of what she’d relayed sometimes coldly, sometimes lovingly. That she would never forgive him. Not if he became single-handedly the end of slavery, and the rest of the evils haunting the world. That she never could forgive him, not until he at least asked for her forgiveness. (Technically, he had, a few times. But she had heard honesty from enough times to know when he was lying to her and he’d quickly given that up.) She also wanted to let him see the emotion that wracked her at the thought of him anywhere near the hanging fate he feared.

“You think I still wish to fight wars?”

He looked dumbfounded, and his quick eyes glanced furiously up and down her body, as though to make certain he was addressing the woman he believed he was. Or perhaps, drunk, in the dark, lost to the grip of memory, he truly did not see her as she was – a Queen to some, a grandmother now, an occasional pirate – but as she had been. A beautiful young woman with a hunger to see and love and judge the world. A woman as strong as the parents who raised her and as cunning as the pirates she’d meant to bend to her cause, but with a righteous fire inside of her that belonged to none of them. (None but perhaps Flint; the other true love still haunting John’s life.)

They were neither of them the people they had been. But then perhaps they would always carry every person they had ever been or tried to be whether they chose to or not. She was apparently at least still a woman he would start and end wars for.

Which was only a more flattering thing for her now she was no longer that beautiful young thing.

Queen and all else she might be, she was only human.

“I think you’re still a woman who sees opportunities for what they are. And - I’m telling you – a good portion of that treasure is still lying around that wretched, haunted place and it’s ours for the taking, Madi!”

She said nothing; wanting so desperately to tease out his real thoughts. He scuffed his crutch in the sand as he seemed to deliberate over which were safe to tell her.

“Hands is dead.”

“I won’t grieve him. But I am sorry.”

“I thought I’d feel… more. Killed by a boy.” He laughed. “You know the worst part? His name was Jim. James. Good, common, Biblical name. But it just had to be another James insisting I should be more of a man than I am.” His glance up at her was sly. “I’m never enough for people, am I?”

She held back her sigh with effort.

“You can’t forgive me. He should, but he won’t.”

An interesting line of thinking. He’d always insisted that, had Flint truly sought revenge on him, he would have known of it by now, and that therefore he’d been right to do what he did. Madi always told him he was missing the point, when she had the energy.

And of course she didn’t need to enquire which He her husband referred to. “Have you asked him?”

“Flint’s dead.”

“So the stories say.” Carefully, Madi began to pick at the rough cloth of her dress. “But I thought you didn’t care about those, and how they are supposed to go. Haven’t you always made your own?”

“I’m not sure of what you mean -”

“Tell me your name."

His mouth clamped shut. He had told her once that of all the times he had betrayed Flint, the worst he had felt from it was when he failed to tell Flint anything real about his past. Because he considered it a failing, his inability to open himself up.

It was the closest she’d ever gotten to an apology from him for anything he hadn’t thought worth apologising for.

“Well,” he said, “these were always going to be for you. I said I’d find it someday. If you want to be done with me…”

“John.”

His eyes shone with reflected possibilities as he waited for her to fill the silence.

“Stay.”

And Flint squawked, “Weigh anchor! Weigh anchor!”

Madi had found him the bird, had named the damn thing. So she smiled. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk again of Skeleton Island.”

“It has new ghost stories attached to it now,” he said, allowing her to help pull him to his feet.

“Well then we can talk of those too.”

“You still want to hear my stories?”

Madi breathed in the smell of the sea still clinging to his hair, and thought about who they would both be in five years; in twenty-five. “I still want you, yes.”


End file.
